Erik T. Ford

Shared by Erik

This underlines common dilemmas that occur in transitioning the functionality of technology while preserving the quality and true value of the service/ app/ offering.

One of the hottest areas of search right now is real time search, which attempts to find results based on what is happening right now. Twitter’s search engine fast becoming one of the key ways to navigate the service and discover what people are thinking about any subject at any given moment. Facebook is testing out ways to let you search your personal stream. Google is waking up to the challenge as well (Larry Page is particularly concerned with keeping up).

Every week, it seems, a new startup launches tackling real time search from a different angle. (Collecta, One Riot, Scoopler, Topsy, Almost.at, Tweetmeme, CrowdEye, Omgili, to name a few). They are trying to apply real time search to all the different streams of information flowing over the Internet right now: Twitter, Facebook feeds, Digg submissions, blog comments, RSS feeds, Flickr photos, YouTube uploads, shared links on bit.ly and elsewhere. The list keeps getting longer every day.

There is something about human nature which makes us want to prioritize information by how recent it is, and that is the fundamental appeal of real time search. The difference between real time search and regular search didn’t really crystallize for me until I had a conversation with Edo Segal, who sold his real time search company Relegence to AOL a few years ago and holds three patents on the subject. “Real time taps into consciousness,” says Segal, “search taps into memory. That is why it so potent. You experience the world in real time.”

This raises an interesting dilemma. If real time data streams are akin to the living consciousness of the Web, how do you search them? How do you search consciousness? It is not the same as searching memory, which is what Google does when it looks at its indexed archive of the Web and how those pieces of information build up authority over time. The real time search dilemma centers precisely around how to rank results, and how to resolve the tension between recency and relevancy.

The default, or at least the starting point, for most real time search engines is simply to put the most recent results up top and then keep pushing then down in a free-flowing river of information as new results which match the query come in. That is what Twitter search does, for instance. It is a chronological stream of the most recent Tweets containing a particular set of keywords. Real time search startup Collecta also takes this approach of simply presenting the stream as it comes in, and letting you filter by source. Ranking results any other way would automatically reorder them and automatically make them less real-time.

Yet not being able to filter that stream generates too much noise. Other approaches attempt to add in other factors. OneRiot, for instance, is developing what it calls PulseRank, which takes into account the freshness of the information, the link authority of the Webpage where it is coming from, the authority of the person who is sharing the link, and the velocity with which the information is being passed around the Web. This seems like a reasonable approach, but it may not catch something important as fast as simply watching the unadulterated stream.

There are other approaches as well. You can look at what people on the Web are actually doing in real time or look for variations in the stream of mentions for any given keyword to notice spikes of activity. When everyone is talking about Michael Jackson or Iran above and beyond the normal level of chatter for those topics, that is when you want to know that you need to pay attention. So maybe real time search is more like an alert system.

Can you search consciousness, or can you only watch it pass by? We’ll be debating this at one of the panels on real time search at our Real Time Stream CrunchUp in July. But it is clear that in order to make sense of the stream, it needs to be ranked by order of importance as well as by time.

(Photo credit: Flickr/Andrew Sea)

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Erik Reader Shared

Shared by Erik

Fantastic and straight/ to the point. Not just for beginners either!

By Chris Tynski

For anyone who’s joined and had success in the Internet Marketing world, there are likely a great number of things you have learned over the years that allow you to be successful today.

This list is compiled from my own experience with Internet marketing,  it consists of the top 5 lessons I’ve learned in 3 areas of Internet Marketing that I believe are essential to success.

These areas include:

Mentality/Frame of Mind

Business Direction

and Marketing Technique.

Mentality:

1. Fake it till you make it.

When you start out with Internet Marketing, you WILL be overwhelmed.   The breadth and depth of this field is staggering, and it’s changing every day.  Don’t let this deter you. Trust that you will eventually “get it” , it will come together, and you will begin to see the big picture soon enough.

2. Focus and persistence on one thing leads to success, even if that one thing isn’t the best thing you could be doing.

One of the most common causes of failure in any particular Internet marketing venture is simply giving up too soon.  Pick an idea and stick with it. Put your heart and soul into it, until you succeed, or are 100% sure it is no longer viable.  Failure to follow through and/or constantly jumping from “brilliant” new idea to “brilliant” new idea is one of the biggest reasons people fail in Internet Marketing.

3. Let the hype get you excited, but realize that people lie, A LOT!

Perhaps a success story got you into this business. Images of huge checks from Google, people sitting on their computers on the beach, or images of people watching their bank accounts fill up.   There are a great number of successful Internet marketers  out there that are real, but 99% aren’t bragging about it.  Let the hype get you excited, but don’t buy into anyone or anything that promises to make you rich without a considerable amount of time and effort.

4. If you’re not learning, you’re falling behind.

Massive success happens when you can identify an unexploited opportunity, and exploit it. The only way you will ever be able to identify real opportunity online  is to have a broad scope of Internet Marketing, and to understand the working of the Internet as a whole.  Get yourself involved in several forums, top notch blogs like Seomoz.org and MarketingPilgrim.com , stay abreast on as many aspects of Internet Marketing as you can, including black hat methods.

5. Building your business/brand is your goal, not hits, diggs, rss subscribers, or accolades.

It can be easy to pat yourself on the back when you see quantifiable goals reached.  Getting visitors, diggs, rss subscribers, or accolades from your peers might feel great, but it’s really only of value to you if it helps to make you money or to build your business.  Visitors do not always equal sales, Diggs do not always guarantee links, RSS subscriptions do not always equal an engaged community; Make sure you are thinking about your true goal.

Business Direction:

6. Ecommerce over affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing can be a great way to start when you first begin with Internet Marketing, but don’t be afraid to move beyond it.  E-commerce can provide massively better ROI, if you put in the time to develop your business.  Affiliate Marketing is the renting of the online world, where as E-commerce is purchasing a house.   If you find a great niche, start your own e-commerce store instead of looking for an affiliate program, you’re profit margins will be 30-70% better, no joke.   The reason most don’t do E-commerce, is because they think it is prohibitively difficult to set up.  In reality, it is quite easy.  There are many open source E-commerce platforms you can use for free, and you can hire a programmer to build you a custom site for a very reasonable price. Once you’ve built a site, find a dropshipper within your niche and start marketing.   Not only will you make more money, but every ounce of work you put into your site will be adding value that can be sold later on.

7. Find and exploit niches yourself.

If people are talking about a niche being really great, chances are, its already too saturated.   Do your own research and find your own niche. Take cues from the real world.  Find things that sell well offline, and see if you can help bring them online.

8. Learn all the basics.

Before you attempt anything in Internet Marketing, learn all the basics.  Until you have a firm grasp on the basics from each of the following, do not move forward:

• How search engines work
• Ranking Factors
• Basic HTML/CSS
• Basic Site-Side SEO
• Basic Link-Building Strategy
• Basic PPC understanding
• Confidence in your ability to pick out scams, and identify real opportunity/legit knowledge

9. Crowdsource and outsource everything you can.

Many of your competitors will not be outsourcing or crowdsourcing their work properly.  Spend time learning this skill and it will reward you ten times over.  Develop processes for every aspect of your business, and figure out ways you can hire people overseas to do them for you.  You can find competent full time employees for 2$ an hour. I’m not joking.

10. Learn to program, or find someone who can, that you are willing to pay.

You will soon realize that without the ability to program, or without someone you can pay to program, you won’t be able to accomplish very many of  your goals online.   If this is not your forte, or if you have no desire to learn programming,  get to work finding someone trustworthy and reliable.

Marketing Techniques:

11. Brainstorming before almost anything else

Without a good idea, all the marketing dollars, social media connections, and mounds of traffic will be close to worthless for you.   Spend the required time brainstorming ideas before implementing them. Linkbait and viral marketing will never succeed if the idea is not a good one, so focus your energy there first, then worry about promoting it.

12. Utilize all channels that make sense, but avoid meatball sundaes.

Twitter, facebook, myspace, youtube, digg, reddit, and every other possible marketing channel has value, but doesn’t necessarily have value to every marketer, or every marketing situation.  Don’t try to force your business or project to utilize all of these technologies if they don’t seem to fit, it’s a waste of time.

13. Repurposing already successful content, unique ideas are not always necessary.

The Internet is huge, and there are thousands of great ideas out there that could be modified slightly, or simply done better.   Find these ideas and make them your own.

14. Understand and try to build true virility when link building.

True virility comes when you create something that is shared faster than it is abandoned.   Your goal should be to engage users in a way that encourages or even incentivizes sharing.  When you reach that magical point where more people are sharing your idea than abandoning it,  you will see the true power of the Internet.

15. Get a few Aces in your marketing pocket.

The best marketers online don’t do it alone, they have a few Aces in their back pockets.  Sometimes these are tools or programs, sometimes they are people. Visit  black hat forums often, see what the buzz is about. There is an underground most people don’t know about, try to infiltrate it.

This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

Erik Reader Shared

Shared by Erik

Fantastic play on the “Ws” applied to Conversion, business innovation and [social] media penetration-

It’s elementary! Your website is a crime scene and I am going to cry bloody murder!

Every second of every day websites are drawing qualified traffic that’s not converting to leads and customers.

And that’s not the only crime being committed! Companies are not setting goals, they are not benchmarking results and often have no basis to track improvement in their marketing over time.

These are all crimes and I call on all internet marketing CSIs (crime scene investigators) to use their deductive reasoning to solve these five puzzles for improved conversion and business success:

1. HOW – How did visitors learn about your site?
It is critical to know how visitors are learning about your site.  Track referring sites for all your visitors.  You should identify which sites (and types of sites) are sending you the most visitors and visitors that convert to leads.  It's amazing what a little focus on the best sources can do to improve your conversion rates.

2. WHO – Who are your visitors (and leads and customers)?
Do you know the kinds of visitors (personas) who are most interested in your products and services?  Qualifying questions on forms can capture explicit information about your visitors and implicit clues such as site visits, downloads, and content viewed can tell you a lot about the DNA of your ideal audience.  Use targeted marketing campaigns to home in on suspects who make ideal customers for your business.

3. WHAT – What content interests your visitors?
Do you know what content or keywords are attracting visitors to your site?  Which lead generation offers get the most downloads? Track the performance of all your content.  You can use some clues to optimize or create new content that will attract more visitors and convert more of them into leads.

4. WHICH – Which are your most effective marketing channels?
Is your site a search traffic magnet because your pages rank high for a multitude of keywords?  Perhaps your email campaigns generate fewer visitors but are more influential in converting your audience into customers.  Figure out which of your channels work best so you can use them strategically to generate more traffic (prospects) and convert more customers.

5. WHY – Why do your visitors become customers, or not?
This is toughest (and most subjective) puzzle to solve.  There are a multitude of reasons customers buy: they need your product, they really liked your sales rep, or maybe you came highly recommended.  Ask your customers after every win and document it.  More importantly, in the event of a lost deal ask the prospect why.  Focus on your strengths and work on filling up the gap to ensure a higher win rate.

Are you a marketing CSI facing similar challenging business puzzles? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Photo Credit: Sashafatcat

Webinar: Website Redesign

Learn how to redesign your website to improve your site conversion and marketing results! Download the free webinar to learn how to turn your website into an internet marketing machine.

Become a Fan on Facebook Get inside info and advance notice of HubSpot's free marketing webinars, ebooks and more. Click here –>

Erik Reader Shared Conversion, social marketing, social media

Shared by Erik

Love valuable round-ups-

Telling stories is an acquired skill. It means learning what makes audiences think critically and laugh heartily. But, most importantly, it means making them part of your stories.

 
Knowing audiences and approaching them successfully is what makes a good storyteller. Not surprisingly, it is also what makes a good marketer. That’s the first lesson that emerges from this week’s top five news stories on InboundMarketing.com:

Act as a storyteller whether you are delivering public speeches or producing other content. In order to engage an audience, you need to offer high-quality content with ease.

Nick Morgan, author of Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, suggests you accomplish this by getting passionate about your subject, adopting purposeful action and gaining storytelling skills. Content in all its forms is remarkable, he argues, when it “informs and entertains at the same time.”

2. The Marketing Myth of “Free” Social Media
Author: Tom Foremski
Lesson: Pay The Price of Social Media

If you want to enhance your online footprint in the social mediasphere, you have to make a commitment. Actually, four of them:

• Time. It comes in the form of spending time instead of spending money.
• Expert. It takes a brand champion to deliver creative content.
• Measurement. It might get costly to measure ROI.
• Research. It requires relevant research for producing original content.

These points demonstrate that social media requires a lot of input. Become aware of the work associated with maintaining social networks and make the necessary commitments.

3. Blogging Is Dying; Twitter Is to Blame
Author: Joseph Jaffe
Lesson: Choose Words Carefully

Become selective with word usage to produce quality content. With its 140-character limit, micro-blogging platform Twitter demonstrates the importance of word choice in expressing ideas. If an idea can be fully expressed in less than 140 characters, would it be worth blogging about?

Micro-blogging makes us more creative when picking blogging ideas. You discover new topics and learn to prioritize them better. In this sense, Twitter is enhancing blogging, not killing it.

4. E-mail Spending to Grow to $2 Billion by 2014
Author: Dianna Dilworth
Lesson: Bridge Email to Social

Make a strong connection between your email marketing and social networking efforts. According to a new Forrester Research report e-mail marketing spending in the U.S. will increase to $2 billion by 2014. “While social media has primarily been a tool for personal communications, marketers have to figure out how to bridge the conversation from the e-mail inbox to the social inbox,” said David Daniels, research VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research.

5. Bing Keeps Growing
Author: Josh Catone
Lesson: Be Truly Remarkable

To compete with industry leaders, you need to be truly remarkable. No matter the size of your marketing budget, people won’t be interested in your product unless it brings them real change. Users are actively looking for such change in Microsoft’s search engine Bing.

Though Bing is growing and currently has 16.7% searcher penetration, it doesn’t offer a legitimate incentive for people to drop Google. “Switching search engines is painless, but if there is hardly a difference in results then why switch,” comments Eric Ungs.

Photo Credit: armadillo444

Webinar: Rethinking Marketing

Want to learn more about how you can use inbound marketing to grow your business? Download the free webinar to learn how to turn your website into an internet marketing machine.

Become a Fan on Facebook Get inside info and advance notice of HubSpot's free marketing webinars, ebooks and more. Click here –>

Erik Reader Shared

Shared by Erik

For those new/ unfamiliar with some of the best conduits for social media!

Inbound marketing may start with creating content, but it doesn’t end there.

As a business marketer or content creator, your instinct may be to hold on to the content you’ve created and post it only to your website in the hopes of forcing people back to your website. But if you’re doing that – holding your content hostage – you’re losing out on free marketing that social media sharing sites will do for you.

By posting your content on social media sharing sites you can leverage those websites’ networks as well as the easy-to-use built-in sharing features of those sites, like easy share links, tagging, and subscription.

Video:

Have some customer case studies? Interviews with your CEO? Recorded presentations from your last conference? Post them to video sharing sites:

1.) YouTube – If your video is under 10 minutes (and the shorter the better), YouTube is the best site for sharing your videos. Key sharing features: tagging, social media share links, video embedding, subscriptions

2.) Blip.tv – If your video is more than 10 minutes, use a site like blip.tv (or Vimeo or Viddler) to post your videos. Key sharing features: tagging, automatic iTunes (and other video) syndication, creative commons licensing, video embedding, subscriptions

Or, use a tool like Visible Measures to post and track your videos across many video sites.

Documents/Presentations:

Take all those slide presentations, ebooks, whitepapers, and post them to:

3.) SlideShare – Take your existing documents (PPT, PDF, etc.) and post them to a SlideShare (or Scribd or Docstoc). Key sharing features: tagging, social media share links, document embedding, subscriptions

Photos:

Whether it’s photos of your team, screenshots of your product, or even funny cartoons, post them online:

4.) Flickr – For any of your images (or even some short videos), flickr is a fantastic sharing site. Key sharing features: tagging, creative commons licensing, slideshow embedding

5.) Facebook – Facebook is an incredibly powerful social network that allows people to share all sorts of content, and photos are among the most popular applications. Facebook now has over 200 million active users, and more than 850 million photos are uploaded every month. Key sharing features: news feed update (when you upload photos, tag people, or people comment on them), tagging (people)

Events:

Have an event coming up? List it on these sites:

6.) Upcoming -Upcoming is an event sharing site hosted by Yahoo. Key sharing points: share your events with your friends

7.) Facebook – Yes, I’m listing Facebook again. But Facebook events are another great (and frequently used) application for sharing events. Key sharing points: news feed update (when creating, attending, commenting on events)

8.) LinkedIn - Similar to Facebook, LinkedIn has an event posting/sharing feature. Key sharing features: posted in LinkedIn network updates (when creating or attending events)

Have you had success posting your content on these sharing sites? Do you have others that have worked well for you? Share your experiences in the comments.

Flickr photo credit: wlodi

Webinar: Twitter for Marketing and PR

Want to learn more about using Twitter for Marketing and PR? Download the free webinar for tips and tricks to drive inbound marketing using Twitter.

Become a Fan on Facebook Get inside info and advance notice of HubSpot's free marketing webinars, ebooks and more. Click here –>

Erik Reader Shared

Shared by Erik

Some cliches to avoid; really love the ‘You Never Ask for Their Business Card or Ask if You Should Follow Up’ section-

You’re already using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. You even have 1,000+ followers on Twitter, 500 contacts on LinkedIn and 2,500 friends on Facebook.

What? You're not closing new deals every day? 

Networking online requires similar skills as networking in the real world. It's pretty easy to collect a bunch of friends or followers on social networking sites, just like it's easy to go and hand out 100  business cards at a networking event. 

If you’re using social media and you’re not getting business results from it, maybe you’re doing it wrong. Here are three common mistakes that any business networker should be able to relate to:

You Only Talk About Yourself. 

If you've been to a chamber of commerce networking event, you've seen these guys. They show up with a nice suit, some cologne, a stack of business cards and they start introducing themselves to anyone who'll listen. They don't ask questions, they don't bother to find out what others do, and most egregiously, they don't bother to find out whether you have a need for what they do. They simply start talking about what they do and why they're the best.  Then, they shove their card in your pocket and move on to the next victim. 

I'm pretty sure I don't have to make the connection here. Be sure to send this link to anyone who's throwing up all over their Twitter stream. 

You Don’t Have Contact Information on Your Business Cards ( Which You Printed on Free VistaPrint Stock)

I've been there. I know how hard it is to bootstrap a company. It's really tempting to get those free business cards from VistaPrint and save $50.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I ordered my first box that way until a cohort of mine smacked me around a bit. 

The online equivalent of the VistaPrint business card is the free blogger blog or the GoDaddy $10/month website. These things wreak of “I just started my biz. I don’t have any clients. I can’t really afford to get a website.”

Even more importantly, though, these websites don’t have what it takes to turn the traffic you attract from social media into sales leads for you. Having a website without compelling offers, landing pages and calls to action is the offline equivalent of handing out business cards that don't say what you do and don't have any contact information on them. 

You Never Ask for Their Business Card or Ask if You Should Follow Up.

Newbies at networking events will swap business cards like handshakes. Some people measure their networking event success by how many business cards they swapped. But, a seasoned networker knows that it’s not quantity, but quality. I learned most of what I know about real world networking from Rick Roberge, Mark Paskell and Jason Kallio. These guys taught me to ask questions and find out whether people had any problems that I could solve, and then ask people if they'd want to talk about that over coffee or a phone call. If I couldn't directly help someone, they also taught me to connect them with someone who could.

Both of these practices will work online too. Ask good questions and pay attention to what other people are saying. Proactively follow up after you connect with people and try to be a resource for whatever issues they’re struggling with, whether you can sell them something to fix those issues, or not. If you focus on helping people, people will want to find out how they can help you.

Photo: oooh.oooh

Webinar: Twitter for Marketing and PR

Want to learn more about using Twitter for Marketing and PR? Download the free webinar for tips and tricks to drive inbound marketing using Twitter.

Become a Fan on Facebook Get inside info and advance notice of HubSpot's free marketing webinars, ebooks and more. Click here –>

Erik Reader Shared

Shared by Erik

A crash course of the most important for conventional marketers. Some good points and shorts on implementation!

When talking to marketers who haven't yet seen the "social media light," I forget that this stuff is still pretty new. 

When I wrote about the need for a social network like Twitter – several years before Twitter was conceived – I never thought that my days would be filled teaching veteran marketers how to build social media service offerings. 

Based on my daily interactions with marketing agencies, I believe we’ve finally reached the point where convincing companies that they need to be using social media to build awareness, audiences, traffic and leads is almost over.

Now it’s about being able to speak to them in terms they understand (rather than in terms our social media peers understand), to explain why a social media strategy is absolutely necessary.

A new e-book from Channel V Media (a HubSpot customer and partner) lays out a good plan for agencies and companies trying to develop a social media plan.

They’ve spelled out 12 key things you must consider when developing a social media program for your business.

It’s a good handbook for in-house marketers, as well as agencies, who are still trying to figure out how to replace their piece-meal campaign-after-campaign approach with a full-blown social media program.

Here’s the 12 Steps:

1. Audience Identification. If you know who your audience is, you’re already one step ahead of the game. The next step is to figure out where they interact online.
2. Platform Development & Design. Figuring out how to engage and interact with this audience.
3. Brand Campaign Integration. It's possible for a social media program to piggyback off a good brand campaign, but it has to be transformed into its cooler younger brother.
4. Content Creation/Coordination. You must create a consistent message.
5. Goal Mapping. In other words, how do you measure your success? Is it brand mentions? Traffic? Email sign ups? Leads? Sales? 
6. Brand Identity. Everyone that is engaging via social media on your team must understand your goals and messaging.
7. Audience Attraction. Larger brands like to start spreading the word of their new, fancy and glossy initiatives at the outset, but if your social media program is good, your audience will find them on their own and the spread the word for you.  
8. Social Media Listening. If you don’t know what people are saying about you and your products, their related interests and more, how are you going to interact with them?
9. Community & Social Responsibility. Social responsibility is increasingly expected of everyone – and this engagement is an essential part of your online identity. 
10. Internal/External Community Engagement & Response. Be everywhere. All the time. It’s up to you to let people know that you are listening, engaging, helping, and offering solutions.
11. Brand Advocacy. Authenticity and transparency are such huge aspects of social media, your social media and management team must be 100% on board.
12. Customer Service. Good customer service involves listening (within and outside of social media) and responding appropriately. 

The ebook has a lot more content, advice and context for these rules. Download it here for free.

Photo: fotopakismo

 

Webinar: How to Sell Social Media to Your Boss

Social media guru Chris Brogan explains how to demonstrate the value of social media marketing. Download the free webinar to learn how to get your company started with social media.

Become a Fan on Facebook Get inside info and advance notice of HubSpot's free marketing webinars, ebooks and more. Click here –>

Erik Reader Shared

Shared by Erik

Excellent take on not only blogging, but establishing an interactive brand that is compatible with communication, customers and the community.

This is my 5000th post here on ProBlogger.net. To commemorate the moment I thought I’d share some of the lessons that I’ve learned in building my blogs.

I was recently asked as the last question (with 60 seconds to go) in a radio interview how I’d built my blogs into successful blogs. What follows is what I wish I’d had time to say.

1. Anticipate Growing Trends

I started ProBlogger back in 2004 (after blogging for a couple of years on other blogs) with a suspicion that making money from blogs would be something that would become more and more common. This blog was an attempt to position myself in the middle of that emerging trend, to help shape it and to create a profile within it.

Take Home Lesson: Watch for and anticipate emerging trends and attempt to plonk yourself (plonk being the technical word for it) right down in the middle of them. Of course this is not easy and there’s an element of luck in picking the right trend (see below for more on Luck).

2. Solve Problems and Meet Needs

This blog has always been a ‘how to’ or ‘tips’ type blog. This is not the only type of blog that succeeds but it certainly is a great thing to build a blog around. I’ve started 30 or so blogs over the years and the only three that have had success and survive today take on a ‘tips’ approach.

Take Home Lesson: My mantra of late: ’solve people’s problems and they’ll come back for more (and tell their friends about you)’.

3. Write for YOU

I began ProBlogger with multiple goals – one of which was to teach myself how to be a better blogger. While I’d been blogging for two years before starting this blog and had been making money from those blogs for a year – I was a the beginning of my journey and wanted to learn more about blogging.

Many of my posts (particularly early ones) have been recording of the lessons I’m learning, research that I’m doing into areas that I wanted to know more about and questions that I asked others to share their experience in (so we could all learn).

I also have a genuine interest in blogging. Again – of the 30 blogs I’ve run over the years its been those that I’ve had a genuine interest in that I’ve been able to sustain.

Take Home Lesson: Blog about topics you enjoy and have an interest in. Write for yourself as much as anyone else. Your readers will be more drawn into your blogging if they see you as the blogger are engaged.

4. Blog over the Long Term and Blog Regularly

In September of this year I’ll have published posts virtually every day on this blog for 5 years (that makes me tired just thinking about it).

5000 posts is small in comparison to some blogs out there but it signals to readers that you’re here for the long haul and are willing to be consistant in providing them with content to engage with.

While it’s not the only factor, sticking at blogging on the one topic for that long and people are bound to start noticing.

Take Home Lesson: if you’re looking for success with your blog – bunker down and set yourself for a long term project.

5. Be Interactive

While it’s an area that can always improve I’ve worked hard over the years to build a blog that is interactive.

Whether it be the comments section (there are now 148,294 comments on this blog), competitions/giveaways, polls, group writing projects etc – I’ve been quite intentional about giving people things to DO when they visit ProBlogger.

Take Home Lesson: People don’t just come online to consume content – many are looking to contribute, interact and belong.

6. Be Personal

I’ve not been overly strategic about this – rather I think it’s my natural style/instinct – but here at ProBlogger I’ve always injected a personal flavor into this blog.

It’s partly about the way I write but also comes out in the video posts that I do, using my own image around the blog, telling about the mistakes I’ve made as well as the successes, writing with emotion (at times), showing a more personal side on Twitter and the stories that I try to inject into my posts from time to time.

People respond well to this – my hunch is that they’re more likely to keep coming back to a blog if they feel they have a connection with a person there.

Take Home Lesson: don’t be afraid to let the real you shine through on your blog. People connect with people not just words.

7. Go Where People Are Already Gathering

I spend a lot of time OFF my blog interacting with people. Whether it be Twitter, Facebook or on other people’s blogs etc – I try to spend time where the kind of people I want to read my blog hang out (as well as the ones who already do read my blog).

When you do this you not only find new readers but you build your brand, meet others who are doing similar things to you to network with and you learn a lot of lessons that you can take back to improve your blog.

Take Home Lesson: Don’t be too insular and just spend time on your own web property – get out there and participate in the wider web.

8. Build Your Brand

My efforts in branding have come about more on instinct than much else but I have worked hard to get the name ‘ProBlogger’ out there over the last 5 years.

I use it (and the logo of this blog) in social media, on the book I co-authored, when I’m speaking or being interviewed and wherever else I can.

I’m fortunate enough (and there’s a big element of luck here in that I chose to use that name for my blog) to have a brand that people actually have come to use in describing those making a living from blogging.

Take Home Lesson: Don’t just think about how you can find new readers – think about how you can make a positive impression upon those who come into contact with you or your blog.

9. Spot and Follow Opportunities

Tuning in to the opportunities that constantly arise around you is one of the main skills that I’d encourage new business owners to work on.

My recent 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook is an example of this. I was running this project as a free series of posts here on ProBlogger when participants began to ask me for something that put it all in one document to work on in their own time. I began to see an opportunity to extend the project and the workbook idea was born. I followed the thread of an idea and made it a reality and in doing so created another income stream for my blog.

Note: part of this process is making mistakes. For every thing that I’ve done on my blog that has worked – there are 10 – 20 that have either been ‘average’ and not worth repeating or screaming failures. The key is to try new things – lots of them.

Take Home Lesson: Never be satisfied with the way you currently do things. There’s always a way to evolve what you’re doing now and make it better, to take a mistake you’ve made and flip it into a success story or to grow something that your readers respond well to into a project of its own.

10. Develop Partnerships

I’m very aware of my own limitations. There are aspects of my business and my blogging where I lack skills or where I’m not experienced.

In these ‘weaknesses’ I choose to develop partnerships and relationships with others.

At times this has meant hiring others to do work, occasionally it’s meant bartering or exchanging services with one another and on rarer occasions it has led to business partnerships (almost always this business partnership type arrangement has emerged slowly over time).

Take Home Lesson: While it’s possible to do everything yourself there comes a ceiling where you either need to stop growing or involve others. My main advice on finding people to work with is to take it slow. Develop a relationship, do small things first instead of investing too much into the relationship and work with people you like.

11. Know Your Goals and Stay Focused

I’m not the most organized, disciplined, strategic or structured person in the world.

However…. I do have a handful of overarching goals and values that determine much of what I do each day.

I think it’s really important to have some kind of vision or goal of where you’re headed – without this you’ll easily get off track and become distracted.

Take Home Lesson: It doesn’t need to be a formal strategic plan – but do know why you’re doing what you do and be willing to filter things that don’t fit with that goal from your daily activities.

12. Work Hard

This comes out in some of the points above but I think it needs to be stated again. Some promote blogging as a passive income or an easy way to make money online.

While I know a few bloggers who make a little money with spammy, automated tools – the reality is that the blogs those create will never have great long term success. They might make a few dollars but if you want to build a blog that builds a readership, that builds your profile, that is respected and well regarded as an authority and that is profitable in the long term – you need be ready to work your butt off.

I can’t really speak for others but I know that the success I’ve had in blogging so far has come from a lot of hard work.

Take Home Lesson: Long hours, extreme effort, sacrifice and a lot of time go into building great blogs.

13. Be Lucky

I’ve spoken about this previously but Luck has and continues to play a part of my blogging success (previous mentions on luck include Be Lucky and How to Be Lucky.

While there are times where you make your own luck – there are also times where things do just seem to fall in your lap. The key is to make the most of these instances.

Take Home Lesson: When good fortune does strike think about how you can extend it and make the most of it.

What Lessons Have You Learned about Blogging?

I’d love to hear some of the lessons that other bloggers have learned in their time as bloggers (whether they be long or short journeys). Share your lessons in comments below so we can learn from your experience!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

13 Things I’ve Learned about Successful Blogging [My 5000th Post on ProBlogger]

Share This

Erik Blogging, Reader Shared, Web Development becoming a better blogger, better blogging, Blogging, communication, online business, Web Development

Shared by Erik

My goodness… I thought bandwidth caps and surcharges from Comcast etc. were bad!

From July 1st and onwards, all PCs sold in China must be shipped with an Internet filtering program called Green Dam. This application, besides being a possible security risk, is supposed to protect the people of China from online pornography, but it could also be used to monitor their online activities and block other, non-pornographic sites.

In protest of this action from the Chinese government, Chinese artist, architect and activist Ai Weiwei has called all Chinese Internet users to stop all online activities on July 1st. “Stop any online activities, including working, reading, chatting, blogging, gaming and mailing. Don’t explain your behavior,” he wrote on Twitter.

Ai is perhaps best known as the artistic consultant for design of the the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Summer Olympics, also known as the “Bird’s Nest,” a project he later distanced himself from. He also started an investigation into student casualties in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, collecting a list of over 5,000 names. He published his findings on his blog, which has been subsequently shut down.

It is hard to judge how effective Weiwei’s call to action will be, since his online communication has been heavily monitored, censored and partly shut down. Furthermore, it’s hard to imagine all of China boycotting all online activities for even one small part of the work day, especially those who have to be online to be able to work. However, if the boycott turns out to be even partly successful, it’ll show that there’s a significant portion of Chinese people who aren’t happy with the introduction of Green Dam – however innocent the authorities claim it will be – and censorship in general.

---

Reviews: Twitter

Tags: china, Great Firewall of China, Green Dam

Erik Reader Shared

Shared by Erik

Excellent assertions and leadership points.

Erik Leadership, New Age Working, Reader Shared Leadership, management, millenials, New Age Working